Solar scam in New Hampshire?

Discussion in 'Tin Foil Hat Lounge' started by duane, Aug 12, 2015.


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  1. duane

    duane Monkey+++

    I have had 3 phone calls in the last 3 days in New Hampshire about installing grid tie solar on my home. They stress how much I will save, how between the state and federal off sets and selling my excess power to the power co, I will pay nothing down and nothing over the next 20 years as it will be offset by the electric co payments. Now if the person making the cold call spoke American accented english and the first question asked wasn't "Do you own your home", I might not be as unwilling to consider the offer. The company that sells the product, the salesman, the installer, and the bank all get paid up front. But what happens if the state lets the power co give you $.05 a kilowatt instead of 3 times that, will you have to make up the difference ? What happens if you wish to sell the house, do you own the system or is it attached to the house? Is it handled as a second loan that has to be paid off if the new owner does not want to assume the note? Who is responsible for the insurance and repair costs? Is it a lien against the property? Well it must be OK as hundreds of people are doing it, including a1 megawatt system for one of the local towns, and no one is worried about it. Sounds too much like the "home equity loans" that everyone took out on the "excess value" of their homes and lead to hundreds of homes being lost post 2008. If the banks say it is OK, it must be crooked. What they did to my 401K and the interest they are paying on what is left should put them all in jail.

    You don't have to be paranoid to believe that the whole world is out to take all of your money.
     
    Marck, Motomom34 and Cruisin Sloth like this.
  2. techsar

    techsar Monkey+++

    Those are all reasons that I have been adding stand-alone solar to my home...without the governments' "assistance" or whatever you want to call it.

    When the local power company was going around to solar powered homes (prior to the switch to digital meters) I got to talk with the tech for a while. Out of all of the homes that he had checked, only one had no backfeed to the grid when the line power was cut - mine. This shows the lack of competence of these so-called installers, or the poor quality of the components. I'm not sure which is to blame.

    Either way, you are quite right for being leery of a caller as you describe!
     
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  3. ditch witch

    ditch witch I do stupid crap, so you don't have to

    Actually I think there's several solar companies that do what you're describing. Solar City is one if I remember right.
     
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  4. NotSoSneaky

    NotSoSneaky former supporter

    Last time I checked the time frame for break-even on the purchase and install was something like 15 years.
    Everybody who want to sell something will tell you how much you'll save. [OO]
    Notice how they never tell you how much it costs ? [tongue]
     
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  5. Motomom34

    Motomom34 Monkey+++

    @NotSoSneaky is correct. We have people in the neighborhood that purchased & installed solar thinking they would be saving loads of money. All said & done & after the first year, they figured it will take them 20 years to break even.
     
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  6. azrancher

    azrancher Monkey +++

    Well, ... OK I went from $250 -$400/ month to $35, and although the power companies in AZ are trying to get the corporation commission to change the rules, currently they buy back at what they sell it to me, $0.125, they're trying to change that but I would be grandfathered for 20 years, my payback is 7 years, I'm 3 years into that and no failures yet.

    You don't want to lease solar, get a loan and pay for it, I think the good days for buying solar are gone, but I still plan on more for the BOL, which will not be grid-tie.
     
    duane likes this.
  7. Georgia_Boy

    Georgia_Boy Monkey+++

    TINSTAAFL solar or otherwise, except salvation.......
    GB
     
  8. William Warren

    William Warren Monkey+++

    I usually see it written as TANSTAAFL. Robert Heinlein popularized it in his novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. You are of course, right: nobody actually gives out a free lunch.

    Here's the way I see it: there has been some big change in either solar technologies, or subsidies, or something else: perhaps we are reaching to limits of the current generating network and those in power (pun intended) don't want to tell anyone to stop buying more electricity.

    So, there's a rush to "solar", mostly in places close to the shortages because transmission loses are so large (i.e., the power lost on high-voltage lines can't be avoided, and must still be paid for, so the closer we can get the source of the electricity to the demand, the cheaper it is to generate the power in the first place(1)). The new "solar" adventurers are, AFAICT, just fast-buck salesmen trying to take out twenty or thirty year leases on every roof in suburbia, and pocket most of the money that comes from the arrays on those roofs.

    Long story short: price what it will cost to install, maintain, and run your own solar array, and batteries and controllers, and then you'll know what the choices are.

    William Warren
    1.) Edison put his DC power plants at the end of every second or third block in cities where he installed his electric lighting systems, so he had much lower "transmission" loses than modern high-voltage AC system must deal with.
     
    duane and Ganado like this.
  9. azrancher

    azrancher Monkey +++

    I thought that was spelled TANSTAAFL, at least that what's wife #1 told me.

    There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
    I are an engineer and no such like an economist.
    Rancher
     
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